Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it promotes growth; blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Perhaps the mildest form of the system of slavery is to be seen in the State of Kentucky. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

A woman's health is her capital. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Perhaps you laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I 'spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Now is all the time I have anything to do with, said Miss Ophelia. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Your little child is the only true democrat. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people's
glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it, - which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy defiance of ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

«In my opinion, it is you considerate, humane men, that are responsible for all the brutality and outrage wrought by these wretches; because, if it were not for your sanction and influence, the whole system could not keep foothold for an hour. If there were no planters except such as that one,» said he, pointing with his finger to Legree, who stood with his back to them, «the whole thing would go down like a millstone. It is your respectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality.» ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power humanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The longest day must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I am braver than I was because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The hand of benevolence is everywhere stretched out, searching into abuses, righting wrongs, alleviating distresses, and bringing to the knowledge and sympathies of the world the lowly, the oppressed, and the forgotten. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Eliza," said George, "people that have friends, and houses, and lands, and money, and all those things, can't love as we do, who have nothing but each other ... And your loving me, - why, it was almost like raising one from the dead! I've been a new man ever since! And now, Eliza, I'll give my last drop of blood, but they shall not take you from me. Whoever gets you must walk over my dead body. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

spitting again, with renewed decision... ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

But at midnight - strange, mystic hour, when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin - then came the messenger. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

At the same time, popular notions of marriage and the home were challenged on other fronts. Utopian communities experimented with radical new forms of marriage or, as in the Oneida Community, did away with it altogether. The Shakers took up celibacy, the Mormons polygamy; and Charles Knowlton issued an underground best-seller on birth control methods. William Alcott, Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and scores of other experts countered ~ Ann Jones

I believe I'm done for," said Tom. "The cussed sneaking dog, to leave me to die alone! My poor old mother always told me 'twould be so. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

At last I have come into a dreamland ... ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

You've always stood it out again' me: now, I'll conquer ye, or kill ye! - one or t' other. I'll count every drop of blood there is in you, and take 'em, one by one, till ye give up!"
Tom looked up to his master, and answered, "Mas'r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I'd give ye my heart's blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I'd give 'em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas'r! don't bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than 't will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles'll be over soon; but, if ye don't repent, yours won't never end! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Your Kentuckian of the present day is a good illustration of the doctrine of transmitted instincts and peculiarities. His fathers were mighty hunters, - men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free, open heavens, with the stars to hold their candles; and their descendant to this day always acts as if the house were his camp, - wears his hat at all hours, tumbles himself about, and puts his heels on the tops of chairs or mantel-pieces, just as his father rolled on the green sward, and put his upon trees or logs, - keep all the windows and doors open, winter and summer, that he may get air enough for his great lungs, - calls everybody "stranger", with nonchalant bonhommie, and is altogether the frankest, easiest, most jovial creature living. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Could I ever have loved you, had I not known you better than you know yourself? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is with the oppressed, enslaved, African race that I cast in my lot; and if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Come down here once, and use your eyes, and you will know more than we can teach you. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Lord gives a good many things twice over, but he don't give ye a mother but once. Ye'll never see such another woman, Mas'r George - not if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

We never know how we love til we try to unlove! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

If women want any rights they had better take them, and say nothing about it. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be torn from you by a brutal trader, tomorrow morning, - if you had seen the man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had only from twelve o'clock till morning to make good your escape, - how fast could you walk? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

On the contrary, an airy and innocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves over her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was always in motion, always with a half-smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and thither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herself as she moved, as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian were incessantly busy in pursuit of her, but, when caught, she melted from them again like a summer cloud; and as no word of chiding or reproof ever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her own way all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move like a shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain; and there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairy footsteps had not glided, and that visionary, golden head, with its deep blue eyes, fleeted along. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

'Who was your mother?' 'Never had none!' said the child, with another grin. 'Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?' 'Never was born!' 'Do you know who made you?' 'Nobody, as I knows on,' said the child, with a short laugh ... 'I 'spect I grow'd.' ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Witness, eternal God! Oh, witness that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Well, it is to be confessed that the cold of warm climates always has a peculiarly aggravating effect on the mind. A warm region is just like some people who get such a character for good temper, that they never can indulge themselves even in an earnest disclaimer without everybody crying out upon them, "What puts you in such a passion?" &c. So Nature, if she generally sets up for amiability during the winter months, cannot be allowed a little tiff now and then, a white frost, a cold rain-storm, without being considered a monster. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the chairs, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor - just such tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your first-born son; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your dying babe; for, sir, he was a man, and you are but another man; and, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life's great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Every individual," wrote another enormously perceptive portrayer of ordinary life, Harriet Beecher Stowe, "is part and parcel of a great picture of the society in which he lives and acts, and his life cannot be painted without reproducing the picture of the world he lived in. ~ Jack Larkin

Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and paintings are like the Freemason's sign, they reveal the initiated to each other. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Deeds of heroism are wrought here more than those of romance, when, defying torture, and braving death itself, the fugitive voluntarily threads his way back to the terrors and perils of that dark land, that he may bring out his sister, or mother, or wife. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

My country!" said George, with a strong and bitter emphasis; "what country have I, but the grave, - and I wish to God that I was laid there! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

never give up, for that is just the time and place that the tide will turn ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The same quickness which makes a mind buoyant in gladness often makes it gentlest and most sympathetic in sorrow. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

How then shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given? ... No: there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to Him; a constant looking to Him for grace. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all it's awful perhapses, -those shudderings and temblings, which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity! What a fool is he who locks his door to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom a spirit he dares not meet alone, -whose voice, smothered far down, and piled over with mountains of earthiness, is yet like the forewarning trumpet of doom! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

My master! and who made him my master? That's what I think of - what right has he to me? I'm a man as much as he is. I'm a better man than he is. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I never thought my book would turn so many people against slavery. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Now, if the principle of toleration were once admitted into classical education - if it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon - all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, and its coolness. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Friendships are discovered rather than made. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. "Ye poor miserable critter!" he said, "there ain't no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul!" and he fainted entirely away. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

And though it be not so in the physical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not always profitless. For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between two dim eternities, - the eternal past, the eternal future. The light shines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn towards the unknown; and the voices and shadowy movings which come to her from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and answers in her own expecting nature. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I tell you now, Andy," said Sam, with awful superiority, "don't yer be a talkin' 'bout what yer don't know nothin' on; boys like you, Andy, means well, but they can't be spected to collusitate the great principles of action."
Andy looked rebuked, particularly by the hard word collusitate, which most of the youngerly members of the company seemed to consider as a settler in the case, while Sam proceeded. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

A true gentleman ... was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-like in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the midst of life we are in death,' said Miss Ophelia. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The ship, built on one element, but designed to have its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, formed and fashioned with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Liberty! -- Electric word! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days ... would be to have women architects. The mischief with the houses built to rent is that they are all male contrivances. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Oh my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much good ... what account have I to give for my long years? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

If any of our refined and Christian readers object to the society into which this scene introduces them, let us beg them to begin and conquer their prejudices in time. The catching business, we beg to remind them, is rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession. If all the broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific becomes one great market for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive tendencies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be among our aristocracy. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe thought Uncle Tom's Cabin was written through her by Another Hand, so little did she know what was going to happen from moment to moment in the book. She herself was amazed at what she was writing. ~ Sophy Burnham

Being an indigenous talent of the African race; ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Sweet souls around us watch us still, press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, with gentle helpings glide. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I long to put the experience of fifty years at once into your young lives, to give you at once the key of that treasure chamber every gem of which has cost me tears and struggles and prayers, but you must work for these inward treasures yourself. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

It's pretty generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world. Now, when any one speaks up, like a man, and says slavery is necessary to us, we can't get along without it, we should be beggared if we give it up, and, of course, we mean to hold on to it, - this is strong, clear, well-defined language; it has the respectability of truth to it; and, if we may judge by their practice, the majority of the world will bear us out in it. But when he begins to put on a long face, and snuffle, and quote Scripture, I incline to think he isn't much better than he should be. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Intemperance in eating is one of the most fruitful of all causes of disease and death. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through ... ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Love is very beautiful, but very, very sad. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I tell you," said Augustine, "if there is anything that revealed with the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses are to rise, and the under class becomes the upper one. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Somewhat mollified by certain cups of very good coffee, he came out smiling and talking, in tolerably restored humor. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

My vocation to preach on paper. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [ ... ] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness - in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture. ~ George Eliot

The underlying foundation of life in New England was one of profound, unutterable, and therefore unuttered, melancholy, which regarded human existence itself as a ghastly risk, and, in the case of the vast majority of human beings, an inconceivable misfortune. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Let my soul calm itself, O Christ, in Thee. This is true ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The power of fictitious writing, for good as well as for evil, is a thing which ought most seriously to be reflected upon. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not. It is as if heaven had an especial band of angels, whose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and endear to them the wayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in their homewoard flight. When you see that deep, spiritual light in the eye,
when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser than the ordinary words of children,
hope not to retain that child, for the seal of heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from its eyes. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

No matter how kind her mistress is, - no matter how much she loves her home; beg her not to go back, - for slavery always ends in misery. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Really, just looking around, you feel a twinge of pity for the poor souls who succeeded in getting past the Pearly Gates. One can't help but picture the lackluster VIP lounge in Heaven, a kind of nonalcoholic ice-cream social starring Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mahatma Gandhi. Hardly anyone's idea of a "with-it" social register. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Dogs can bear more cold than human beings, but they do not like cold any better than we do; and when a dog has his choice, he will very gladly stretch himself on a rug before the fire for his afternoon nap. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe